Learn Python The Hard Way author Zed A. Shaw has a suggestion: Learn the basics of four programming languages. Shaw describes in detail the difference between beginner coders and early coders.

Once upon a time, knowing how to use a computer was virtually synonymous with knowing how to program one. And the thing that made it possible was a programming language called BASIC.

Part of the cover illustration from "The Applesoft Tutorial" BASIC manual that shipped with the Apple II computer starting in 1981. Credit: Apple, Inc.

After BASIC, in the early 1970s, Niklaus Wirth developed Pascal, another language meant to solely be a tool to teach students computer programming concepts. “This language was not really developed to ...

If you are a certain age, your first programming language was almost certainly BASIC. You probably at least saw the famous book by Ahl, titled BASIC Computer Games or 101 BASIC Computer Games. The … ...

The language that made that all possible. They called it the Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code— BASIC. Before BASIC, life in the computer programming world was complicated.

In the 1950s and ’60s you generally used machine language, which had commands like “sal 665” and “sal 667.” (Those tell the computer to move its accumulator, a crucial region of memory ...